Howden in East Riding of Yorkshire

Visit Howden and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Howden, East Riding of Yorkshire. Written descriptions do not prepare the visitor for the startling sight of this magnificent church framed in its own ruins just off a small market place. Lordly St Peter's today consists of a living part — the nave and transepts with tower between them; and an empty shell — the ruined east end, chancel and chapter house. The tower rises in splendour over the little town and makes the church seem very close to all that goes on. A walk through the churchyard is the quickest way to get from the market place on the East to a similar centre on the West Terraces of pleasingly proportioned houses of the last two centuries surround the church closely.

The church has ancient roots. It was raised by the Prior of Durham to collegiate status in 1267. Most of the present church is of late 13th- to early l4th century construction. As the work progressed westwards from the tower, the 107-ft-long nave beautifully illustrates the change from Early English to Decorated styles, with the crowning touch on the west end where the great window is set off by four octagonal turrets, pierced and pinnacled with crocketed spires. The chancel, 110 ft long, continued this style and was finished in 1335. Towards the end of the 14th century, the beautiful octagonal chapter house was built by Bishop Walter Skirlaw in Perpendicular style with 30 seats, each backed by a carved panel in deep relief quatrefoil design. To keep up this magnificence after the Dissolution was a great burden and by 1609 the parishioners were using only the nave, as now. The lead was taken from the chancel roof to repair the nave and in 1696 the chancel collapsed in a thunderstorm. The chapter house, similarly neglected, fell in 1750.

The church contains a wealth of interesting detail and fine objects. such as the 1450 brass portrait of a knight in the Lady Chapel near a 1340 stone statue of the Annunciation showing a dove on the shoulder of the Virgin; the tomb effigies of the 14th century, in the Saltmarshe Chapel; and the three heavy churchwardens' chests, one roughed out of a single tree trunk.

A path beside the church leads to the playing fields past the old bishop's palace, now a private residence.